


i am ready to follow you

by lydiasage



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 21:57:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18600190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lydiasage/pseuds/lydiasage
Summary: Adam might belong to Cabeswater, but Ronan belongs to Adam.Or, the one where there's a lot more to Cabeswater than anyone realizes and Adam and Ronan get to experience it firsthand.





	i am ready to follow you

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the song frozen pines by lord huron & the album strange trail by lord huron is what inspired this work.

Adam was aware of two things: he was really really tired (Actually, tired didn’t accurately describe the exhaustion that he felt. He was worn out, in every sense of the word. He couldn’t see auras like a couple of the women at 300 Fox Way, but if he could he imagined it would be grey and dull, one breath away from dissipating completely-- just like he felt.) and he didn’t see a time in the foreseeable future when he was going to be able to rest.

He closed his eyes and let his forehead rest on the dingy wooden desk that occupied almost half of his room at St. Agnes, feeling like calculus equations might be burned into his eyelids by the end of the night. The desk was something he found at the thrift store while spending the day with Blue. It was the only thing he bought that day, and between the two of them they had barely managed to maneuver it into his car. (Blue left with an armful of clothing that Adam called “brightly-colored chaos” and she somehow looked even more exceptionally pleased with her purchases at that.) 

Adam lifted his head before his body could decide that the uncomfortable chair, awful posture, and hard desk could be overlooked in favor of a few hours of sleep. His back was still recovering from the last time he fell asleep at the desk, hunched over an assignment he ended up having to finish during his breaks at Boyd’s the next day.

Once he finished this calculus assignment he had planned on (looked forward to) passing out on his tiny bed, but halfway through the assignment he started to feel the telltale signs of Cabeswater trying to communicate with him. And no matter how tired he was, Cabeswater’s presence would only become more persistent if he ignored it. 

He was getting more proficient at understanding what Cabeswater wanted from him. Needed from him. Adam was always a quick-learner, apparently even so with a more metaphysical subject matter. He knew that the feeling in the middle of his chest, like there was a ball of raw wool residing there and someone was pulling at it, insistently, would only be lessened once he stood up and Cabeswater sensed he was on his way to do whatever it wanted him to do. Maybe overturn a couple stones or remove a diseased plant or something (Or once, block an entire stream up with rocks and redirect it 14 inches to the left.) He was long past questioning what Cabeswater needed; he agreed to be its eyes and its hands and that’s exactly what he intended to do. 

Adam worked through the last problem of the assignment as quickly as possible and was scanning over the rest of his answers a final time when he interrupted by three lazy knocks on his door.

Back protesting he stood up and went to open to door, unsurprised to see Ronan standing in the shadow of the hallway. Chainsaw was perched on his shoulder, quietly watching. 

Adam didn’t say anything but left the door open as he went back to his desk. He started tidying up his work and heard the door close quietly behind him.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Adam asked, zipping up his backpack after making sure he had his tarot cards and anything else he might need tonight. 

Ronan made a noncommittal sound. Adam turned to find him leaning against the closed door, looking viciously elegant in the dim light despite the fact his leather jacket was covered in rainwater that was dripping onto the floor. The already tiny room suddenly seemed ten times smaller than usual. Ronan’s presence had a habit of doing that. 

Adam rubbed the back of his neck, half to work out a kink that had developed there and half just to have something to do with his hands while Ronan’s eyes were focused on him. 

“I’m about to head out, actually.” Adam says lightly, and Ronan raised a brow.

“Got big plans, Parrish?” He drawled, reaching a hand up to scratch Chainsaw’s head when she nuzzled closer to him, not moving from his position.

“If Cabeswater wants me too, yeah,” his voice was clipped, not so much in anger but resignation to the knowledge that it might turn out to be long night for him. 

Ronan scowled, “It’s the middle of the fucking night and also the middle of a fucking storm, Cabeswater can hold its horses.” 

Adam rolled his eyes and grabbed his jacket off the chair. 

“That’s not how it works and you know it, Lynch.”

He pulled on the jacket and slung his backpack over one shoulder. He gave Ronan, who was still blocking the door, a pointed look, but he didn’t move. If anything he somehow made himself seem even more in the way. Tonight was one of the nights where Ronan wanted to argue. (Which was most nights, if Adam was honest.) 

“You look like you’re going to take one wrong step and pass the fuck out, Parrish, there’s no way you can drive. Oh, and did I mention there’s a fucking storm going on?” As emphasis, Ronan yanked the front of his jacket roughly making raindrops fly everywhere and causing a perturbed Chainsaw to ruffle her feathers. 

A couple drops of water hit Adam’s face but he didn’t move to wipe them away. It was true that Adam felt like he might fall into a sudden deep sleep at any moment, but if he ignored Cabeswater the messages would only become more insistent and well, if Adam was candid, creepy. He wouldn’t be getting any sleep either way. 

So, unimpressed at Ronan’s display, Adam said nothing, just raised a brow of his own as if to say, and? After a few long moments, Ronan broke eye contact first, much to Adam’s surprise. 

“Fine,” he scowled, shoving his hands into his pockets. “But I’m driving. I don’t feel like dying in your shitbox tonight.” 

Adam thought about a couple things he could say to that, but in the end he was too tired for the conversations that would follow any of them. 

Instead, he dropped his car keys on the desk with a small clang and walked past a mildly surprised looking Ronan to open the door.

 

“So, where are we going?” Ronan broke the silence once they were seated in the BMW. They were both wet and cold from the brief walk to the car and the rain was loud enough that Adam had to raise his voice in order to be heard over it. 

“Start heading south,” Adam rubbed his hands together, hoping to generate some kind of warmth. “I’ll have to give you directions as we go, I’m not quite sure where we’re going to end up yet.” 

Ronan nodded and pulled out of St. Agnes’ parking lot.

As Adam turned his head to stare into the darkness passing outside the passenger window, he absentmindedly he rubbed his hands together again and breathed into them. He didn’t do well with the cold, just like Ronan didn’t do well with the the heat during Henrietta summers. 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ronan turn the heat up and something rose up in this throat like it always did when Ronan did things for him. He felt suddenly flushed and he didn’t think it had anything to do with the BMW’s heating system. 

They drove for a while in silence but it was comfortable silence, which Adam always marveled at. He had a thing about comfortable silences, he wasn’t very familiar with them. He grew up in a silent house, rarely sharing words with his parents that weren’t yelled and accompanied by fear, guilt, or some other unsavory emotion. Growing up silence had always felt like the calm before the storm. There wasn’t a limit on what could be imagined in silence and Adam imagined it all.

He would spend hours trying to think of what his father could possible become angry at, hours thinking about ways to avoid it, hours imagining a life where he didn’t get smacked over the head for something like leaving the cap off the toothpaste. It wasn’t that Adam was an extremely imaginative child, probably not more so than any other kid his age, but he was logical and perceptive and the fact he could never get ahead of his father’s anger, could never imagine what would set him off next maddened him to no end. So silence was never comfortable, not before Adam met Ronan. 

And he knew Ronan had a thing for making people uncomfortable, staying silent when words were expected, creating dissonance in conversations purely because he could, which made it all the more bewildering. Adam sure as hell didn’t know what to make of it when he first met Ronan, but it did irritate and wind him up with base emotions Adam wasn’t fond of. Until he realized that Ronan did it with everyone, and then Adam realized that silence worked both ways. Instead of getting worked up at it he accepted it, this was just how Ronan ticked. 

He still remembered the first time it happened, when he said something to Ronan and was met with a wall of silence and and arrogant eyes, but instead of dwelling Adam just tilted his head in acknowledgment and carried on like Ronan wasn’t being an asshole. Something changed that day, settled between them like sand under water. There was a new look in Ronan’s eyes, an appraisal for Adam that he didn’t think he imagined. Adam didn’t tend to imagine things like that but he also didn’t know what to do with them. But silence between the two of them was comfortable, and if Adam dared say it, intimate in its own way. 

He cleared his throat. “Uh, take a right here.” He gestured to an unmarked path along the side of the road, immediately feeling a bit of relief from Cabeswater’s pull when Ronan pulled onto it. They were quiet again as he maneuvered the BMW along the overgrown path that in all honestly probably wasn’t suited for cars in the first place. The headlights illuminated the low-growing bushes and weeds until they become more and more frequent, taller, thicker, and it was obvious the BMW wouldn’t be able to go much farther. 

Ronan let the car slowly come to a complete stop, everything was quiet and loud at the same time. The engine hummed as they listened to the storm rage on around them.

“Well..” Ronan trailed off, fingers tapping some nonexistent rhythm against the steering wheel. The rain and wind outside seemed to let up a little, which Adam took to be sign. 

“Now we walk.”

Adam straightened himself up in his seat and went about zipping up his jacket and throwing his hood up, not letting himself mourn the thought of leaving the warm confines of the car. He reached for the handle to open the door but Ronan’s hand on his wrist stopped him. 

He was ready to argue with whatever Ronan was going to propose to stop him, had his reasonings all lined up in his mind but the words dried up in his mouth when he turned to face him. Ronan wasn’t looking at him, instead his gaze was focused out the windshield, in front of the car where the lights formed two glowing circles in the darkness. 

Startled at the expression on Ronan’s face, Adam’s eyes also focused outside, searching for what could possibly make Ronan Niall Lynch look nervous but he couldn’t see anything. 

“Ronan?” Adam’s voice was a little below a whisper. Ronan had leaned over when he grabbed Adam’s wrist and he was close enough that he could feel the heat of his body, could smell the leather of his jacket and a hint of whatever cologne he was wearing. Something dark and woodsy and something else, something familiar. It made Adam want to lean in a little closer, to try and identify what it was, but Ronan released his wrist and the moment passed. 

“Are you sure we need to do this tonight?” He asked it quietly, and Adam knew in that moment if he said yes Ronan would follow him without question. The apprehensive look was gone from his face and now he just looked guarded, like he usually did, but the memory of that look made Adam want to say no. To say that they could come back tomorrow, when it was light and hopefully not raining. When the darkness didn’t make Adam feel like Ronan was the only other person in the world. 

Instead, the energy that tied him to Cabeswater surged like a wave threatening to overcome him. 

“Yes,” he breathed, forceful, voice sounding foreign to himself. Blood was pounding in his ears and he could feel the wind like it was inside him; where did the storm end? Where did Adam Parrish begin? 

Ronan’s face was still unreadable but he rolled his eyes, reached behind the passenger seat, and tossed another jacket onto Adam’s lap. With a “bundle up, Parrish,” he was out of the car before Adam could protest. 

Adam stumbled out after him, pulling on the jacket as he went. It was much warmer than Adam’s own and probably five times more expensive, but it was also waterproof and fleece-lined so he kept his mouth shut. 

Without the BMW’s headlights the darkness seemed to pulse around them and in that darkness, accompanied by the weather coming at them from all angles, Adam felt disoriented but the most likely had something to do with Cabeswater’s influence as well. 

Ronan pressed something into Adam’s hands, something small and cold, cylinder. With fumbling fingers he found a button and pressed it, causing a tiny beam of light to appear. It looked to be a normal flashlight, but with Ronan you could never be sure, and he couldn’t really inspect it in the dark. 

“Did you dream this up?” Adam asked, shining the light in Ronan’s general direction but taking care to avoid his eyes. 

“No,” Ronan said, that one word managing to sound both offended and pleased. (Of course he was capable of dreaming a normal flashlight, but that was incredibly boring. Ronan wasn’t boring.) 

“But these I did,” and Ronan released a handful of those little firefly creatures he always seemed to have floating around the Barns. 

Adam thought it was a little unfair that on anyone else that would have looked silly, but Ronan still managed to pull things off like that and look cool and composed with various fireflies hovering around him. Adam was still always a little amazed by the beauty of Ronan’s dream-things, didn’t think there would ever be a day when wasn’t. Even then nightmares were beautiful in their own way, though Ronan decidedly didn’t feel that way. But just the fact that they even existed, the impossibility of it combined with Ronan’s casualness rendered Adam so speechless at times he felt he needed to lie down. (And not in the usual way he felt he needed to lie down.) 

What was it Gansey had said? You incredible creature. 

On the other hand, Adam felt like he was just dressing up in the clothes of the Magician half the time. Still learning to play his part, still playing catch-up and never quite making the headway he wanted, but he was trying and that had to count for something. 

“Well, you lead. I’ll follow.”

The tired and delirious part of Adam wanted to laugh at that, but instead he made an effort to pull himself together and actually get to work on what they came here to do. 

So exhausted, wet, and miserable (at least on his part, Ronan seemed indifferent at most), Adam started walking. They made their way through the underbrush; Adam guided by Cabeswater, Ronan guided by Adam, Cabeswater formed by Ronan.

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE let me know what you think!!! i am very excited for this and any input/constructive criticism/general thoughts would be so appreciated...!


End file.
